


Grief

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Natasha Needs a Hug, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Wanda Needs a Hug, post- Age of Ultron
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:33:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6817030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The Black Widow mourns? Who could you possibly grieve for? Who have you lost?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

> I watched Captain America: Civil War the other night and this was the result. No spoilers for CW here though, only takes place after Age of Ultron.

It’s half past twelve in the afternoon when it happens.

They really should stop giving the newest Avengers lunch breaks, Natasha thinks as she and Cap speed down the hall towards the training room. Left to their own devices, _this shit_ apparently happens.

Let them fend for bread and water during a thirty second gap between combat training and mental calisthenics.

She’d suggested it; Cap had just looked at her like she’d grown three heads, until she’d shrugged with a purse of her lips and a “Have it your way, softy” cock of her head before she’d shown Sam how to _properly_ bust a punching bag with one blow.

Also she’s slightly grumpy because lunch was lasagna, and damn it, Natasha was the first bite away from oregano ecstasy when the windows had startled to rattle. Around the table they glanced at each other.

Vision had a “don’t look at me” expression, even though he probably doesn’t know what it is to _have_ an expression.

Please let it be just a plane, Natasha thought to herself. Just a plane. No fighting today.

Then a cup had slid off the counter and crashed into a billion pieces on the floor.

They head-counted each other. Cap was assessing, calculating, reviewing tactics even before he and Natasha reach the conclusion at the exact same time.

Only one was missing.

And now they’re running, listening to glass fall and seeing dust filter in tiny glittering specks from the walls.

“What’s going on, Romanoff?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure you can guess, and I don’t exactly have the time to go over the logistics with you, so maybe later?”

“Fix it,” a voice says to Natasha through her earpiece, and Natasha grunts.

“You realize that’s what we do, right?” she says, a little out of breath. Only a little.

She shuts off the link. _Honestly_.

There are guards on the periphery of the mats, their guns leveled meticulously on Wanda. They’re trained to kill, and she stands in the middle of the room oblivious to them. Natasha would think she was practicing, her fingers dancing through the red wisps, her hands turning in what almost looks like tai chi. Her movements are relaxed. Her eyes, her face, are not.

Tears are flowing down her cheeks, and Natasha can guess what she’s thinking of.

Or rather, _who_ she is thinking of.

It hasn’t been that long. Hasn’t been long enough. She knows that Wanda isn’t… she’s doing _well_ , sure, but yet she isn’t. There have been too many close calls like this already. Too many instances. The council thinks she’s a liability, Stark is worried about what happens next, and Natasha just wonders if it’s all worth it, in the end.

Steve gestures to the men with the guns, who stand down. Who leave. Natasha always marvels at that, that he can command men with just a wave of his hand. Oh, she can too, but hers and Cap’s techniques are… _different_.

“Wanda,” he says. “Wanda, can you hear me? This needs to stop. Can you stop for me? I know you don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

Out of the corner of her eye Natasha can see Rogers start to walk to Wanda; Natasha stretches out her hand to stop him. The _last_ thing Wanda needs is a man approaching her from behind. Especially when she’s not in her right mind to control what she might do to him.

She’s murmuring to herself. It’s Russian, but Natasha can’t make it out. The only thing that matters is that she doesn’t listen to Steve, and that the floor begins to shake.

“Wanda.” Now it’s Vision’s turn to try. “You simply must listen to us, Wanda. It’s all right, I promise you. No one is going to be angry.”

“She’s not doing anything wrong,” Natasha mutters to him. “She’s upset.”

Nor is she listening to Vision, and, Natasha knows that rankles him. She’d feel sorry for him, maybe, but she’s not happy with the idea of Wanda being blamed for _this_.

“She’s tearing the building apart,” Sam counters.

“Yeah, I can tell.”

“This isn’t helping,” Steve says, and gives Natasha _that look_ that tells her, well, crap, she’s expected to actually do something.

“You’re her handler, Nat. Now’s the time to handle.”

“You have such a way with words,” she says to him with an exaggerated sigh. “No wonder you can’t get a date.”

He gives her a good-natured grin, the quintessential golden boy even when the world is falling around them. HYDRA or a baby witch with no control over her powers, it doesn’t matter.

“Maybe I have a date, Romanoff. Maybe I have a date tonight, what do you think of that?”

“Your hand doesn’t count, Steve.”

“Okay, that’s not—“

“Can we do this some other time?” Sam says, exasperated. “I mean in case you haven’t noticed, we’ve got a little something more important going on.”

Natasha shakes her head, and steps forward onto the mat.

If you want the job done, send a woman in to do it.

_Women are better than men, Natalia. Men rely on brute force, on their ego. We rely on our minds, on our intelligence. We seek out planning, strategy, influence. We are not swayed by a pretty face._

“Wanda.”

No response.

Round and round her head her power twirls. She could easily take out each of the Avengers that have circled her. Sam. Cap. Vision. War Machine. Natasha.

“ _Wanda, what’s the matter_?” she says quietly, in Russian.

She moves closer, edging stealthily in the way she learned when she was eight years old.

Ballet. Good for something, maybe.

The pattern that Wanda forms with her hands hurts Natasha’s eyes. She remembers what it did to her. She remembers Madame B, the graduation ceremony.

_Sloppy. Pretending to fail._

But still she moves nearer.

“ _Pietro is dead_.”

The building shakes. She can hear Cap talking, to security most likely. Natasha ignores it.

She focuses.

She’ll teach Wanda focus, if it’s the last thing she does. Because if she doesn’t, sooner or later something they do will be their last thing.

“ _Yes, Pietro is dead._ ”

Wanda gasps a little, and the sound seems to suck the world’s air supply with it.

Somewhere, a window blows out.

“ _It hurts_.”

Sometimes it seems as if Wanda forgets. She has begun to smile, to laugh with them. She’s able to sit and talk with them, about training, or, occasionally, life in Sokovia. She’ll talk about Pietro, fondly, telling a funny story or something brave that he did, just before the end.

Natasha knows how hard it can be, but Wanda seems to be adjusting.

Ah, but. _Fallaces sunt rerum species._

Wanda haunts the base at night. Natasha has gotten up for a glass of water and even the Black Widow has jumped ten feet when she’s entered the kitchen and seen Wanda’s face and long hair framed by darkness. She doesn’t sleep, or can’t sleep, whichever. Sometimes they will find her napping on the couch, and either Steve or Sam will cover her over with a blanket. All of them hope she’ll rest, because a tired Avenger can be a deadly Avenger. Minutes later she’ll be gone from the couch, the blanket neatly folded.

Gone like quicksilver, into her own thoughts and her pain.

“ _I know it hurts, little witch._ ”

Wanda glances at Natasha.

It’s barely discernible, but the red power Wanda holds in her hands falters. Only slightly, but it’s there; Natasha notices it, wonders what caused it.

Is it that she knows it hurts?

Or is it something else?

It doesn’t matter, because the power returns, in full force and perhaps a little stronger.

She’s weaving on the mat now; she’s moving effortlessly in her knee-high boots. The black dress falls just to her thighs, and for a split second Natasha thinks she’s pretty.

She seems so impossibly young and vulnerable, but still, so pretty.

She would have been a good part of the Red Room. The way she fills out the dress and the red jacket, the leggings and the boots. She would’ve been able to seduce the strongest of men, the strongest of women. But the thought of it fills Natasha with revulsion. Wanda has already been used. Has already been thrown out like so much garbage.

And she’s better than that. She’s so much better than any of it. Maybe, just maybe, better than any of _them_.

“ _What do you know of this_?”

What does she know of that? Natasha asks herself. There’s not a satisfactory answer to the question. She should know, because she’s asked herself too many times. And every time is a different answer. Every time is a memory she’s still not sure is hers, or just something implanted by the people who trained her to be who she… used to be.

“ _I have known pain before._ ”

“ _But have you known grief_?”

Natasha glances away.

Remembers Marina.

Grief at her own hand. There’s something poetic about that. To know grief, and to know that that same grief… was the result of your own hand.

“ _Yes._ ”

She pretends not to hear the scoff that precedes Wanda’s next words. It doesn’t hurt her. She’s moved past that.

“ _The Black Widow mourns? Who could you possibly grieve for? Who have you lost?_ ”

“That’s not important,” Natasha says, a little tersely and in English, then takes a deep breath. When she speaks again, her voice is soft.

“ _Wanda, please stop. Pietro is dead, I’m sorry. But this is not the way to bring him back._ ”

If the Avengers could bring back the dead, Natasha was sure Howard Stark would be in charge again. She’s not altogether sure that Tony hasn’t tried, hasn’t at least entertained the idea. Who could be blamed for trying to retrieve what they had lost? Who would be at fault for wanting to say _I’m sorry, I love you, please forgive me_?

She’s standing next to Wanda now. She’s mindful of the fact that the Scarlet Witch could take her mind once more, but still, Natasha reaches out and closes her hand as gently as possible over Wanda’s wrist. She can remove the threat by force if she has to, but she’d really rather not. She thinks that’s maybe a sign of getting old. She’s just so damn tired of fighting for everything.

Wanda is so still, so still in Natasha’s hand. Her power wavers. She refuses to look at her.

“ _Don’t be afraid, little witch. We can help you. I’ll help you._ ”

The earth stops its descent to madness, as easily as flipping off a switch. The red haze disappears, and instead Natasha finds herself looking into tear-filled green eyes.

“Hey,” she says, with a casual tip of her head. As if they’ve met in the hallway or in the common room, instead of in the middle of one of Wanda’s meltdowns.

“I’m sorry…”

“Nothing a little plaster and a broom won’t fix,” Natasha says with a shrug.

The force of the movement makes her step backward. Her arms are useless at her sides until Natasha realizes, oh, yes, this is that thing people call hugging. This is what they do when they are emotional and in need of reassurance.

So… she reassures. Awkwardly, with a little pat to Wanda’s back. Wanda is warm but shivering against her, and Natasha’s embrace tightens in a way that she doesn’t even have to think about.

“Let’s go talk, Wanda,” Captain Rogers says, and his voice is kind, non-judgmental. Nothing will happen to her, Natasha knows, but she still doesn’t like the sensation of Wanda pulling reluctantly out of her arms.

Wanda nods and moves, almost meekly, to stand with Cap. He regards Natasha curiously, a knowing smile on her face that makes her roll her eyes.

“What?”

“Where’d you learn how to be comforting, Romanoff?” he asks once Wanda is out of earshot, having followed Sam out of the training area.

“The Red Room,” she challenges, with her arms folded across her chest. “Trust is an easy way to manipulate a target.”

He shakes his head.

“No, that wasn’t the Red Room. That was all you,” he says over his shoulder as he leaves.

Hours later, Natasha needs to breathe, and she feels stifled inside the apartment.

Tony has made sure that the base is equipped with everything the Avengers might need. The latest technology isn’t surprising. The AI at their beck and call to satisfy whatever whim they may have at any hour of the day or night, that’s not surprising either. In the apartments there are sheets with thread counts that are insane, a well-stocked refrigerator, the latest selection of movies and shows to be watched on the biggest and best television screen. None of that is a surprise.

The rooftop garden, well, that _is_ a surprise.

“Someone probably needs to relax,” Tony said the one time Falcon had brought it up. “I mean, not me, because I’m perfectly calm. But someone else may need it. Have you checked it out? The gardenias are gorgeous.”

And they really are. All the flowers are gorgeous, Natasha sees. They grow in wild abandon, pink and white and purple petals surrounding a small fountain. The water flowing can’t mask the sound of her footfalls; assassin as she may be, there is someone just _slightly_ better, and she looks up as Natasha approaches.

Natasha isn’t sure why she chose that time, that moment, to decide she needed to relax, but she feels regretful when Wanda sees her.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’ll come back.”

“No.” Wanda shakes her head, shifts a little on the ledge of the fountain. “Please?”

Natasha hesitates.

It’s noted, and Wanda bows her head.

“I will not hurt you.”

“That’s not…” Natasha sighs, and crosses the roof to sit next to her.

“I’m not afraid of you.”

It’s the truth. It’s funny, that she isn’t afraid of this witch who invaded her mind and forced her to relive things she had thought long buried in the unattainable recesses of her mind. But it’s protection, Natasha knows. Indoctrination. The things a person will do to survive, when they think the only way to live is to bring the world to its knees.

“You should be.”

She feels the touch of Wanda’s fingertips on her forehead, cool and gentle. Yet Natasha tenses, and Wanda smiles sadly.

“You could do it again,” Natasha affirms, wondering if Wanda’s hands are cold because night is falling over the city, or because her face feels a little more heated than usual.

It’s the weather, she decides.

“But I don’t think you will.”

“I can’t control myself.”

“You can,” Natasha insists, as Wanda’s hands drop to her lap. “Only someone who can control would have had the power to leave Ultron’s side and join the Avengers.”

Wanda shrugs and looks out over the night sky. “Or someone who is weak.”

Natasha snorts. “You’re anything but weak, Maximoff.” Now she sounds like her handler. It’s more comfortable than sounding like she wants to be Wanda’s _friend_.

But Natasha can’t avoid that, either.

“Your power is unstable right now because you were trained to be that way. We’re going to train you to be… something else. Different.”

“Either way, how can I know who I am? Only with Pietro did I see myself as something outside of _training_.”

She spits the word out as if it tastes bad, and Natasha can’t blame her. After all, aren’t they asking Wanda to trade one battle for another? Does it really mean anything different, if it’s by choice?

It’s still war.

“I look for him,” Wanda is continuing, and Natasha concentrates on her words.

“For so long, it was Pietro and Wanda. Wanda and Pietro. My brother, my friend. Part of me. And now I look for him, and he is nowhere.”

This is something Natasha can’t imagine. Until Clint and the Avengers, she hasn’t known family. There have been no mothers or fathers. No sisters or brothers that would make her feel _home_.

But she remembers “losing” Fury. She thinks of what it would be like to have Cap or Clint or any of the others ripped from her the way Pietro was taken from Wanda, and Natasha thinks she might get it. Just a little.

“Maybe because you’re looking outside,” Natasha said. She leans back on one hand and looks at Wanda.

“Pietro is dead,” she says honestly. “He’s not coming back, Wanda. And I know that hurts. I am so sorry. I wish I could change things for you.”

Wanda nods, fresh tears glimmering in her eyes, and Natasha sighs a little to herself.

She’s just not good at this. She hasn’t been trained for this.

“If you keep looking at every guy on the street thinking it’s Pietro, you’re going to tear yourself up inside. If you keep hoping you’re going to hear his voice, you won’t be able to hear anyone else’s.”

“And if I keep waking up in the morning thinking he’s alive, and then remember he’s not… then what?”

Natasha shrugs. “You cry. You get angry. You go to the training room and you punch something. Punch Sam, he needs to get better at his parries.”

She catches a fleeting glimpse of a smile. It makes her feel better, and Natasha offers her own tiny grin in return.

“And maybe try to remember that Pietro’s where you can never lose him.”

“Where is that?”

She doesn’t know what compels her, but Natasha reaches out and lays her palm over Wanda’s heart, feeling it beat.

Strong. Sure. In control.

“Here.”

They fall silent then; Natasha’s hand drops into her own lap and she watches as the sun sets.

Her fingers tingle.

“You didn’t answer my question earlier.”

“What question is that?”

She’s playing defensive, coy. It’s a tactic, and Wanda sees right through her with a faint upward quirk of her mouth.

“Who have you lost?”

She doesn’t _have_ to answer. Because really, other than Marina, there hasn’t been anyone in Natasha’s life that she has lost who has, in fact, stayed _gone_. Fury had “died,” but he was back. Somewhere. Off in Europe, whatever. At the time she’d really felt like she’d lost a father; now Natasha knows she’ll never look at death the same again. Which could be a problem, if any of the Avengers…

But no. She won’t think of that. She’ll think of her own death, always, and of how to circumvent it. But she _will not_ think of the others.

She hadn’t been trained how to deal with that.

“I did answer you. I told you it didn’t matter.”

“I could learn of it.”

Were they always going to come to this? Natasha wonders.

She turns to Wanda.

“So learn it,” she says, a little coldly. “Go ahead. You’ve already found out about me; since you think you have no control over yourself, do it. Get inside my head. Find out why _the Black Widow mourns._ ”

She ends in Russian, challenging Wanda.

Who shakes her head.

“No.”

Natasha gets up and walks over to the ledge of the roof, staring down. Up here the city is only a low hum, an annoying buzz of activity. She crosses her arms over her chest, looks over her shoulder at Wanda, who is staring at her.

“Myself.”

“ _What_?”

“I mourn for myself. That’s who I’ve lost. I never had a chance.” She turns back to the city.

“Can you say you’ve lost someone you’ve never known, though? I don’t know who I would have been, if I’d grown up with a mother and father. Going to school, playing with friends, having a boyfriend or a girlfriend. I don’t know Natalia Alianovna Romanova, really.”

She smiles a little ruefully, feeling Wanda’s eyes searing into her back.

“But I still grieve for her. Every day.”

She hears the crunch of dirt as Wanda walks up behind her. Natasha turns. Not out of fear, but out of…

Could it be want? she thinks.

Or worse…

Need.

“Perhaps,” Wanda says to her, sympathy on her face that doesn’t fill Natasha with irritation, as it normally would, from anyone else.

“You are looking for yourself in the wrong place.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow. “Where do you think I’m looking?”

Wanda shrugs. “The Avengers. They’re your family—“

“And yours,” Natasha adds gently. She hopes it’s true, anyway.

“They are your family. And you fight on the right side of battle now. But fighting for your forgiveness won’t tell you who you are.”

“Well then, where should I look?”

Her voice is slightly mocking, but if Wanda hears it, she doesn’t let on.

Instead, she raises her hand.

Natasha doesn’t flinch.

Wanda’s palm is warm through Natasha’s shirt, resting on her chest, over her heart.

“Look here,” Wanda says softly, her eyes fastened on Natasha’s. “She’s right here.”

Natasha glances down at the hand, then back up at Wanda.

“You’re very wise, little witch.”

Wanda smiles, a genuine, bright smile that reaches her eyes. She takes a step back, and Natasha sees the faint sheen of blush that spreads over her cheeks to her ears.

It’s disappointing when Wanda removes her hand.

“I like it when you call me that.”

“When I call you what?”

“Little witch. It’s nice.”

“Hmm,” Natasha considers. She grins at Wanda. “I’ll remember that when I’m making you do chin-ups.”

“I could do them one-handed,” Wanda asserts, and Natasha has no doubt that she probably could.

“You’ll have to prove it then, ‘cause right now War Machine is showing you up and making me look bad in front of Cap. And I can’t look bad in front of Cap.”

“Captain America is…”

“A friend,” Natasha says quickly.

Wanda tilts her head. “I know,” she says. “I was going to say that he’s a good man.”

“Oh. Yeah. He’s a good man, and a good friend.”

Wanda’s hand on her heart burns like a memory. Like absence. Like grief tempered by the sweetness of _once was_.

A breeze courses through, and Natasha notices Wanda shiver.

“We should go inside,” she says, suddenly wanting to bundle her up in blankets and keep her warm from the cold of the world.

“I usually wait until it’s dark,” Wanda remarks, and Natasha shakes her head.

“That’s a good way to get sick, and what kind of handler would I be if I let that happen?”

“Handler,” Wanda says, a strange expression on her face.

Well, that’s quite possibly the worst thing she could’ve said. Handler. As if Wanda is once again someone to be controlled and manipulated.

Natasha shakes her head. “ _Friend_ ,” she amends. “I… I want to be your friend, Wanda, and I don’t want you to get sick by staying up here on the roof until after it’s dark. Plus, you popping out everywhere at night is just a little bit creepy.”

“Says the Black Widow,” Wanda retorts, and it’s nice, to actually have it given back to her.

“Yes. I’m the only one allowed to jump out of the shadows,” she says with a smirk, and is rewarded by another dazzling smile.

An assassin could get used to that smile.

“I’ll try to remember this arrangement.”

“You do that,” Natasha says smoothly. “Now come on. Let’s go to the kitchen. You missed lasagna, that’s a crime around here.”

She moves to walk towards the double doors leading back into the base, but Natasha stops short when she feels a smooth, delicately warm hand slip into hers. She looks down, tracing the thin veins of the hand up to Wanda’s face.

She looks adorably awkward.

It should be in her nature to pull away; it _is_ in her nature to pull away.

 _Trust no one but yourself, Natalia. Everyone else is your enemy_.

But there’s a warmth traveling from her fingers to her heart, and the last thing Natasha wants to do is remove her hand from Wanda’s.

 _She is right here_.

Maybe fighting for your own forgiveness isn’t so bad, Natasha thinks.

If you have someone fighting with you.


End file.
